The Importance of Community Identity

The Importance of Community Identity

Every person needs a stable sense of identity to function in the world. From childhood, we constantly ask ourselves: Who am I? How am I different from others? How do others see me? What should I aim for? We answer these questions largely through socialisation — the process by which our families and communities teach us how to live in society. Socialisation is not a one-way instruction; it involves continuous dialogue, negotiation, and even struggle with significant others like parents, family, kin, and the wider community.

Our community gives us our mother tongue and the cultural values through which we understand the world. It also anchors our self-identity. Community identity is based on birth and belonging, not on acquired qualifications or accomplishments. It is what we are, not what we have become. No one chooses which family, community, or country they are born into. Such identities are called ascriptive — determined by birth, involving no choice on the part of the individual.

Our membership in families, religious communities, or regional communities has no preconditions, yet it is total. Most ascriptive identities are hard to shake off; even if we try to disown them, others may continue to identify us by those markers. This accidental, unconditional, and inescapable belonging is why we can be so emotionally attached to our community identity. Expanding and overlapping circles of community ties — family, kinship, caste, ethnicity, language, region, religion — give meaning to our world and a sense of who we are. That is why people often react emotionally or even violently when they perceive a threat to their community identity.

A second feature of ascriptive identities is that they are universal. Everyone has a motherland, a mother tongue, a family, a faith — at least in a general sense. We are all equally committed and loyal to our respective identities. While some individuals may not be particularly committed to one aspect of their identity, the potential for such commitment exists for most people. Because of this, conflicts involving communities — whether of nation, language, religion, caste, or region — are very hard to resolve. Each side sees the other as a hated enemy, exaggerates its own virtues, and magnifies the other's vices. When two nations are at war, patriots on each side see the other as the aggressor; each believes God and truth are on their side. In the heat of the moment, it is hard for people to see that they are constructing matching but reversed mirror images of each other.

Communities, Nations, and Nation-States

At the simplest level, a nation is a large-scale community — a community of communities. Members of a nation share the desire to be part of the same political collectivity. This desire usually expresses itself as the aspiration to form a state. In its most general sense, the term state refers to an abstract entity consisting of a set of political-legal institutions claiming control over a particular geographical territory and the people living in it. In Max Weber's well-known definition, a state is a "body that successfully claims a monopoly of legitimate force in a particular territory."

A nation is easy to describe but hard to define. We know many specific nations founded on common cultural, historical, and political institutions — shared religion, language, ethnicity, history, or regional culture. But it is hard to come up with defining features that a nation must possess. For every possible criterion, there are exceptions and counter-examples. Many nations do not share a single common language, religion, or ethnicity. Conversely, many languages, religions, or ethnicities are shared across nations, yet this does not lead to a single unified nation of all English speakers or all Buddhists.

How then do we distinguish a nation from other kinds of communities — an ethnic group (based on common descent plus language or culture), a religious community, or a regionally-defined community? Conceptually, there is no hard distinction. Any of these community types could one day form a nation, and no particular kind of community is guaranteed to form one. The criterion that comes closest to distinguishing a nation is the state. Unlike other communities, nations are communities that have a state of their own. That is why the two are joined with a hyphen to form the term nation-state.

Today, it is hard to define a nation in any way other than to say it is a community that has succeeded in acquiring a state of its own. Interestingly, the opposite has also become increasingly true: existing states find it necessary to claim that they represent a nation. One characteristic feature of the modern era is the establishment of democracy and nationalism as dominant sources of political legitimacy. Today, 'the nation' is the most accepted justification for a state, while 'the people' are the ultimate source of legitimacy for the nation. In other words, states need the nation as much or even more than nations need states.

But there is no historically fixed or logically necessary relationship between a nation-state and the varied forms of community it could be based on. This means there is no pre-determined answer to the question: How should the 'state' part of the nation-state treat the different kinds of community that make up the 'nation' part?

How States Have Historically Treated Cultural Diversity

Most states have been suspicious of cultural diversity and have tried to reduce or eliminate it. They have used two main strategies:

• Assimilationist policies: Aimed at persuading, encouraging, or forcing all citizens to adopt a uniform set of cultural values and norms — usually those of the dominant social group. Non-dominant groups are expected or required to give up their own cultural values. This often involves outright suppression of ethnic, religious, or linguistic identities.

• Integrationist policies: Different in style but similar in overall objective. They insist that the public culture be restricted to a common national pattern, while all 'non-national' cultures are relegated to the private sphere. Here too, the dominant group's culture is often treated as 'national' culture.

Both sets of policies assume a singular national identity. States have used various interventions to establish this:

• Centralising all power to forums where the dominant group constitutes a majority, eliminating autonomy of local or minority groups
• Imposing a unified legal and judicial system based on the dominant group's traditions, abolishing alternative systems
• Adopting the dominant group's language as the only official 'national' language, making its use mandatory in all public institutions
• Promoting the dominant group's language and culture through state-controlled media and educational institutions
• Adopting state symbols celebrating the dominant group's history, heroes, and culture (national holidays, street names, etc.)
• Seizing lands, forests, and fisheries from minority groups and indigenous people, declaring them 'national resources'

Cultural Diversity and India as a Nation-State

India is socially and culturally one of the most diverse countries in the world. According to the Census of India 2011, it has a population of about 1.21 billion people — the second largest in the world, soon to become the largest. These billion-plus people speak about 1,632 different languages and dialects. Twenty-two of these languages have been officially recognised and placed under the 8th Schedule of the Constitution, guaranteeing their legal status.

In terms of religion:

• About 80% of the population are Hindus, who are regionally specific, plural in beliefs and practices, and divided by castes and languages
• About 14.2% are Muslims — making India the world's second largest Muslim country after Indonesia and Pakistan
• Other major religious communities: Christians (2.3%), Sikhs (1.7%), Buddhists (0.7%), and Jains (0.4%)

Because of India's huge population, even these small percentages add up to large absolute numbers.

India's Approach: Neither Assimilationist nor Integrationist

The Indian case fits neither the assimilationist nor the integrationist model. From its very beginning, the independent Indian state ruled out an assimilationist model (though some sections of the dominant Hindu community have demanded it). Although 'national integration' is a constant theme in state policy, India has not been integrationist in the way described above. The Constitution declares the state to be secular, but religion, language, and other such factors are not banished from the public sphere. In fact, these communities have been explicitly recognised by the state. By international standards, very strong constitutional protection is offered to minority religions.

The 'State-Nation' Alternative …